It's Always Six o' Clock Now
by thosepedanticlunatics archive
Summary: With Tetch no longer "courting" Alice Pleasance, one might think that he's taken a step in the right direction towards good mental health, but rather, he's merely found another scapegoat to stand in as the font for his obsession.


**Content Warnings:** Language; implied psychological conditioning

xxxxxxxxxx

It seemed a natural shift really, in retrospect. Maybe not at first, but if you really examined it from his point of view, it was a completely obvious leap. So simply, sparing all of the nasty details and pains that go along with most revelations, The Hatter thought: if he couldn't be with Alice, wouldn't The March Hare be the next best thing? As a matter of fact, might pairing off with Jonathan be a good option in itself, or perhaps even the _better_ option? He thought on it some more. In literature and in life (if there was, in fact, a noteworthy difference), the Hatter and the Hare were well embroiled in one another's lives, an obviously complementary set of two with common interests, trapped (or rather blessed?) by perpetual tea-time. Although in the latter case, Jervis would admit, the tea was an abstract metaphor that he hadn't entirely thought out, while the original pair were at a literal standstill.

But that didn't matter. Jervis's impression of the book he so cherished was still off, though he refused to think of his interpretation in those terms. Despite the almost pointed lack of amorous intrigue in _Alice in Wonderland_, Tetch was a romantic at heart (in both senses of the word, he supposed, but mainly the sort that begot heart-shaped Whitman samplers and thornless bouquets of roses). If he was going to live by the book, he was going to have to bend it to suit his needs. And he'd really bent it back hard this time. It wasn't to be doubted though, that it all laid out perfectly in his head. In his head, he could make anything logical just by telling himself that it was so. The Mad Hatter didn't deal in sense, and for this, many a beleaguered Gothamite envied him.

To a saner, less obsessive person, the situation at hand would have been much more cut and dry: he'd finally dropped his infatuation with Miss Plesance (or rather,_ Missus_ Dodgson now) as a result of finding someone new. That was perfectly normal. But what was true of sense was also true of normal, and the deranged haberdasher was loath to bother with that either. In order to rationalize this latest attraction, his entire fantasy world had to be reconstructed. He had to make room for Jonathan before he could act, but due to the nature of the beast, the rearranging aspect was quick and easy. It was the active romancing that was going to be tricky. So in brief, Jervis went on to court his latest beloved in a senseless and abnormal manner, though of course, it seemed perfectly alright to his mind.

It did, however, started off painful, nerve-wracking, and unsteady, just like before. Despite his sentimental ways, The Hatter wasn't often subject to fancies like this. In fact, there'd only been two accounts of such happenings that he could point to: this current one right here, and the sordid incident that had come before.

So he wasn't very experienced. That was okay, he at least knew that kidnapping was out. He only hoped that he could maintain that one ground rule if push ever came to shove. Which it very well might. Alice had been unwitting, that was one thing, but The Scarecrow was a mule of a person. Stubborn. And much like a feral cat, solitary. But no, kidnapping never turned out right. _Well **except**_ for the SLA, but even that didn't last. Not really. No, dash it! No kidnapping. No mind control. Jonathan's most wonderful attribute was his mind; it was too precious to blot out.

So even though it didn't _technically have to_, the pursuit of The Scarecrow did in fact start off painful, nerve-wracking, and unsteady. Even though he'd long since molded himself into the bombastic Mad Hatter, the warped and familiar sensations evoked by his passions were making him feel like the oft maligned no-name he'd been before: a quiet, bookish nonentity called Jervis Tetch, and little else beyond that. Jonathan was so big, and he was so small, both literally and figuratively.

He'd been down that road before too: _'How could a speck of a fellow like me be worthy of a _beau ideal_ like you?'_

It was a bit of a nasty road, but it couldn't much be helped. It was also rather at odds with the "two birds of a feather" rational he was keen to fall back on, but neither love nor Tetch were fans of coherence, as previously outlined.

It seemed a wonder that the professor hadn't acknowledged how quiet his consort had grown in those first few weeks (months? Weeks. It seemed to drag on to Jervis though, it was sickeningly slow). They were all but proper business partners by then, teaming up on a regular basis. Being similar men with similar ends and means, it wasn't a shock to anyone that they had forged something semblant of a bond. As such, the duo spent a great deal of time together, though this was less to Crane's liking, as he was by nature introverted to the point of being asocial.

Jervis thought it was awful how his beloved apparently failed to notice his changed demeanor. Against his own will, The Hatter had muted his more flamboyant mannerisms and grown reticent in Jonathan's company. He'd dredged up the telling nervous habit of running his fingers through his bangs as well, usually coupled with painfully obvious nervous laughter. And he was almost certain that he stared. _And _that he'd been caught staring, several times in fact. How could it be any other way? Jervis was sore with embarrassment. How could his beloved _not_ know? He couldn't be that wrapped up in his own thoughts, could he?

Apparently, he could. Jervis gave it time. He gave it lots of time, and despite what he had to imagine was ever-permanent blush and the recent reemergence of his _shitty stumbling stutter_, Jonathan did not react. Either he was just that deaf or just that disinterested, and for Jervis's own sake, he prayed it was the first one.

He got a little bolder.

"How did you ever get to being so brilliant?" "What a profoundly clever boy you are!" and "I know it must seem a silly thing to say, but I really think you're lovely person" were among a series of seemingly unprompted compliments that he'd had taken to spouting. He couldn't help it. They were all truths as far as he was concerned, and far be it for The Hatter to lie. He was occasionally thanked offhandedly, but his much-adored Hare's most common response was unfortunately something in the line of "Tetch, if you want me to loan you money, be direct about it. Flattery will get you nowhere." Frankly, it would have been extremely annoying if it weren't so agonizing.

The more time Jervis spent as a single man, the more vexing and severe his yearnings got. His conscious mind was consumed by a vast array of idealized fantasies, just the way it had been by Alice (but her only roles in his daydreams now were passing bit parts). He couldn't help it really, nor could he blame himself. The _recherche_ academic seemed a missing puzzle piece: rational, steadfast, and cool under fire in all the ways that Jervis was not. He was also rather dashing, in his peculiar way. Confident, bewitching Jonathan. He was far from a perfect person, but that didn't make him any less beguiling.

He was a cagy bastard though, and his one lone fancier didn't have the foggiest concept of what went on in the fellow's braincase. His every twitch, passing glance, and accidental brush felt like thunder, compelling The Hatter's foolish heart to drub. _'Does this mean he wants me? Does this mean he **hates** me? Just what on Earth did he mean by **that?** Why won't he look at me? iT's aLL HiS faNcY, tHaT: hE hAsn'T gOt nO sOrRoW yOU kNoW!'_

Jervis shrank back at the intensity of his own thoughts. He was being juvenile, he knew it, and moreover not very graceful about the way he handled his personal whims. In short, The Mad Hatter was daft with emotion.

But really, how was he supposed to be? What was he supposed to _do?_ Arrange a bouquet, write a courtly poem, and approach the self-proclaimed Master of Fear? Goodness no. Jonathan wouldn't respond to something like that at all, but oh, what a sweet thing it would be if he did.

_If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic._

Actually, as unfortunate as it was, Crane seemed to be one of the most loveless individuals Jervis had ever met, and it was a terrible folly that he should want after the professor so desperately as he did. It was a right crime.

He daydreamed about the types of flowers he might conceivably arrange probably more often than he should have. Red and orange roses, white carnations, lavender heather, and viscaria, or else Christmas roses and white violets. Knowing Jonathan, he'd probably prefer to have something wilted and decaying, but that wasn't very romantic.

He'd written many poems also, but they never were quite right, so he disposed of them. They always turned out insipid and jejune, not at all worthy of Jonathan's time.

He was over six months into his latest obsession and Tetch was just as tentative as he'd always been. He needed a push, and God willing, he was fated to receive one:

After a scuffle with some mutual enemies—not Batman, not the police, but a violent pack of thugs hired by ex-allies- the duo fled and were promptly separated. Their opponents had also retreated, all rightfully choking on fear gas, but The Hatter was still a pulpy, battered mess, and he could only assume the same of his cherished companion. He had no concept of Jonathan's condition, or if he was even still conscious. The last he had seen, the lanky felon was scrambling into a dark patch, presumably to hide and lick his wounds.

Or die quietly.

_'Don't think things like that!' _Jervis gave himself a mental slap on the wrist for his alarmism.

He himself had beenforced to run in the opposite direction, burrowing behind a pod of rubbish bins until it was safe to come out. It took an excruciatingly long time to relocate his partner in crime after the fact, and The Hatter felt he'd spent something that was close to an hour circling buildings and calling his name, dissolving into brief flurries of panic several times over. It wasn't as if they'd never been compromised this way before, but something about their partition unsettled Jervis greatly. When they were finally reunited, the poor little fellow had been whipped into a veritable frenzy.

He peered into one of many adjacent alleyways, dank and slummy as it was, and by all rights expected to turn up negative for the hundredth time, but just as sure as solid ground, there was a dazed and daunted Scarecrow ambling miserably down the way. He was visibly shaking and clutching a wounded shoulder, but the point still stood that he was clearly not dead. Much to his retrospective embarrassment, Jervis was promptly occupied by a rush of relief and affection; he hurried forward and trapped him in an ardent embrace as a first order of business. As it was, if he hadn't clasped his arms around the gaunt man's midsection, those bony knees surely would have buckled at the sheer force of the gesture. Jervis was only about as tall as The Scarecrow's sternum (give or take a few inches), and this made the Hollywood kiss that the former had been dreaming of quite impossible without a little cooperation. But it felt more than alright to nuzzle his face into towering Jonathan's chest, pressing it with gratifying pecks while muddling through some appropriated quotations.

"YoU cAn't _ThiNk_ hOw GLaD i Am tO sEE yOu AgAiN yOU DeAr oLd tHiNg!"

Crane was apparently struck dumb at the display, which was just as well, because his companion clearly wasn't in any state to explain himself. He didn't rightly care that the professor's body was stiff and unreceptive, nor that he himself had just released his most compromising secret into the wild. At the time being, his only interest was maintaining this tender contact with his March Hare for as long as possible.

A parade of phrases forced its way from Jervis's mind to his mouth, though he barely registered the onslaught nor did he bother to curb it. Some of his words were Carrollian and some were organic, but Jonathan had apparently gotten the point, and it startled him more than any thug could.

"Don't put this on me Tetch." He fumbled out of The Hatter's grip suddenly, looking bewildered. Jervis couldn't help but to return the expression, bracing himself against the alley's cold draft. He felt a little broken at the abrupt dismissal.

Crane studied him silently, assessing the gravity of the situation. It seemed a terrible long while before he responded to his fellow rogue's confounding overture, and when he finally did, the sounds produced hardly qualified as communication.

"At the very least I—you can't—I-"

"Need time?" Jervis offered.

"Yes!" he practically spat. "Time. Give me time to think."

The Mad Hatter was then subjected to a very disorienting swirl of both relief and heightened tension, but for once in his life, he managed to _keep his head._ Somehow, he couldn't believe that he still had a chance in all of this, but at the same time, he couldn't help but wonder how viable said chance really was. It would be a terrible oversight to assume that Jonathan had forgotten about what happened to Alice Pleasance, and it was more than possible that his outward indecision was a defensive lie. But Jervis was more than willing to take what he could get for now.

"V-very well," he coughed. "Go ahead and think."

xxxxxx

Persistence was all he needed. Yes, just a little persistence. Professor Crane wasn't just a loner, Tetch decided, he was lone_ly. _He'd been "thinking things over" for upwards three weeks now, but to no conclusive result. He was stalling, obviously, because he'd been a failure at love, or because he was skittish about commitment or something. He couldn't be won over all at once. He had to be eased into it, so Jervis sought to do just that.

Their regular team-ups had proven a valuable pursuit, and as such it wasn't unusual for the men to cohabitate a lair from time to time. At present, they were holed up in an abandoned elementary school, living mainly out of the teacher's lounge, as they had been for several months. Jonathan had been keeping to himself even more than usual, but the fact that he'd at least decided to stay had pacified Tetch's worries. It made the precious dandy a little more confident, even if it wasn't supposed to. He may have been dotty, but Tetch certainly wasn't stupid. He could sense Jonathan's disinclination, and he knew that if the problem wasn't addressed fittingly, then yet another wonderful fascination would be lost to him both as a cohort and as a possible mate.

Most of what he did in the name of romancing his hare was motivated by a mix of careful calculation and a lack of self-restraint. The two instigating emotions were essentially direct opposites, so it was a curious dyad, but then again, so were he and The Scarecrow.

Jervis knew that, if he was going to go down the route of persistence (which he was), he had to make his affections known. The problem was deciding how. Though he certainly had his preferred methods, the object of his desires would hardly be receptive to such antics. He had to do it Jon's way, but what exactly did that mean?

The way to a professor's heart was through his mind, so Tetch fought wits with wits, rather than emotion with emotion. It hardly seemed proper, but not much about their friendship was these days.

Jervis found himself doing lots of favors all of a sudden, at his own insistence, and running all manner of errands, which he didn't mind at all. Jonathan clearly didn't either, and he soon realized that he'd be benefiting from his accomplice's attention much more than he'd expected to. The Hatter was dutiful, very eager to please, and he waited a long, deliberate while before finally requesting favors of his own. Just small things, mind you, nothing beyond "Oh Jonathan, would you run to the market and fetch me _?" or "I seem to have run out of circuit boards, do you suppose you could scrounge a few more up for me?" Simple tasks.

His Marchie wasn't a dense man, of _course_ he knew what the Ben Franklin Effect was and how it worked; it would be foolhardy to assume that any holder of a doctorate in psychology didn't. But that didn't make said doctor any less human. As such, Professor Crane's prodigious understanding of psychology didn't immunize him from mind games. At least, Jervis hoped it wouldn't. Subtlety had become the key, perhaps even more so than indefatigability.

He often wondered, if his methods worked at all, how long would the process take?

xxxxxx

_Epilogue: _

Of all the people in the world, it had to be The Mad Hatter. The codependent, corybantic, _mad-as-a-hatter_ Hatter. Crane knew he couldn't very well reject his _suitor_ out and out, after the trouble with Alice only a complete imbecile would do that, but taking an obsessive up on his whims was just as suicidal. The night of Tetch's expulsive declaration (or, "The Incident," as Jonathan had privately dubbed it) had been revelatory. The Scarecrow and The Hatter were business associates first and foremost, and although they were very much on friendly terms, their arrangement had been devoid of any sort of outward affection, especially the sort that involved his accomplice _nuzzling his face into Jonathan's chest_. And there was a reason for that. This was business. Their partnership was effective, reliable, and symbiotic, but as of that night, it became all too apparent to the professor that there was a fungus among us, and that fungus had ulterior motives and a lot of feelings.

Living with Jervis since then had become increasingly uncomfortable for him. The manic little techie was never very good at maintaining appropriate boundaries, but as of late he seemed like a full-on "personal space invader," packed away all neat and tidy in his metaphorical (and wretched) flying saucer. A new and distressing implication shaded his compliments now, and in fact, their consistent appearances made a great deal of sense all of a sudden, whereas before they seemed to come out of nowhere. Confessing his sentimental feelings had freed Jervis from the long-standing bashfulness he'd been suffering from. Or perhaps it was just the opposite. It was also possible that this doting had been going on for longer than Jonathan had imagined, and the only changed factor was his own personal awareness thereof. Unfortunately, it was a moot point. The days of his own ignorance were over regardless of the situation's peculiarities, and as such, every kind word, fond look, and handshake that lasted _something like .5 seconds longer than it reasonably should have_ stood out like a driven stake. He had to guess that Tetch's outburst was a long time coming, but he never would know how long exactly. Jonathan found himself ruminating on the subject often, probably doing just as Jervis hoped he would.

Weeks passed, and discomfort soon gave way to removed curiosity. The whole affair was, after the initial shock, a decent ego boost, which was always welcome by Jonathan's standards. He was often in need of a little esteem, though he made a point never to let on about such things. This sense of wellbeing was only exacerbated by all of the gifts and services his admirer was suddenly so insistent on providing.

Jonathan had lied before; flattery was the gateway to success.

It's not that he wasn't aware of what it was meant to do, not by any stretch. The whole thing was calculated. A genuine display, but calculated all the same.

That didn't matter. By the very nature of those acts, Jervis had elevated Jonathan and placed himself in a servile position. Whether that in particular was intentional or not was murky (over the duration of their ensuing relationship, Crane always maintained a small series of hunches about that), but most notably, it made The Hatter non-threatening.

By the result of a ruinous childhood, Jonathan was as mistrustful as he was domineering, and as such, it was absolutely essential that any and all potential partners be placid and submissive. Not that Tetch knew that. Nor was it the case that the infamous Scarecrow was on the market. Good God no, those days were long since over. Besides, "non-threatening" was only the tip of an extremely unrealistic, self-contradictory iceberg, and said iceberg was age-old. It had long since been written off as foolish by its keeper. Along with non-threatening, for example, a potential partner had to be self-sufficient, and although he would want this imaginary person to have wits that matched his own, Crane would be damned if they might even be _construed_ as more intelligent than himself. At the very most, they could be his equal, but nothing more. As a unit, he and his hypothetical... _confidant_ would have to understand one another on top of that, be cut of the same cloth, perhaps having similar interests. And of course, this entity would have to be compatible with a criminal lifestyle. Who could possibly be flexible enough to fit that description?

Jonathan frowned. His rhetorical question had developed an answer, and he wasn't at all fond of it. Thinking the matter over clearly hadn't helped. Jervis had been wifeing himself up for months now, and much to The Scarecrow's dismay, it was fucking _working._

But that didn't mean he was going to give in necessarily. He couldn't stand to be manipulated that way, even by a docile little domestic like Tetch. No, he had a long way to go before he'd cave in to_ that._

Worriedly, he added "RESPECTS PERSONAL BOUNDARIES" and "TALL" to his list in mental red pen. He found himself greatly disliking the situation all over again. He sighed, low energy, in small resignation.

Emotions were such a handicap.


End file.
